The chief goal of this research is to develop robust and practical numerical methods for solving the highly nonlinear partial differential equation describing unsaturated flow in porous media. A new combination approach consisting of a rational function transformation and a common under-relaxation technique is proposed to solve the finite element formulation of h-based form of Richards equation. Numerical studies show that this combination method outperforms previous numerical schemes in the sense that it can use larger time-steps and mesh sizes to produce acceptable results and also converge...